I used to keep up with political news – both US and international – almost daily, as a sort of twisted hyperfixation. Part of it was having friends who are directly affected by the things that happen over there, part of it was morbid curiosity. I got out of that about a year ago, significantly cutting down on political social media content, and it’s been very good for my mental health.
One of the people who was often on the forefront of the hatred I consumed a year ago was Charlie Kirk. His opinions were so extreme, and so absolutely vile that every time I saw his face I cringed a bit. This past week has been tough on my mental health, as the news of his shooting has been so overwhelming that everyone is talking about it and it cannot be avoided. And I’ve really struggled with people that I share an online space with calling him “an amazing person” and “someone with great ideas.”
It’s times like this where I find that I’m less extreme than I sometimes like to think. I still can’t find myself celebrating a man getting shot in front of his wife and children, even though I think he was a horrible person. He believed slavery was good for black people, he was homophobic, his ideas on women are beyond outdated and he has gone on record saying that some people dying due to gun violence is something that cannot be avoided. Yet when he’s part of that statistic, conservatives lose their mind, forgetting to even care about the other shootings that took place on the same day.
I wrote a much longer post about this, talking about all of Kirk’s beliefs in life and how they are so different from what I believe in. What hurts me about this story is how it is quickly made to be about the shooter’s supposed transgender partner. I’m not sure if that part is true, but even accepting it at face value, a shooter having a transgender roommate or partner doesn’t make that roommate or partner guilty by association. Yet conservatives have been blaming the trans community for this, despite only about 0.1% of shootings being done by transgender people while about 1% of the population identifies as transgender. This means they are completely underrepresented in shootings, so blaming them is beyond crazy.
I have transgender coworkers, friends and I know some celebrities whose gender identity doesn’t match the one they got at birth and all of them seem like great people who found themselves after struggling for a time. Although I am cisgender, I can empathize with the struggle to find who you are, as I went through years of depression and mental health issues before figuring myself out. Having this community blamed for violent acts they didn’t commit just because some figures in politics are pure evil hurts. I do not celebrate Charlie Kirk’s shooting. But with the beliefs this man held, I also cannot find it in myself to feel any empathy for it. I hope his children recover from the trauma. I empathize with his family, but I find it quite frankly hard to swallow that his death has impacted the world so much while the school shooting on the same day is already forgotten. I’m sorry for the very political posts, I’ll go back to detoxing.
Opal Kaharis 